I got a phone call from the Sunday Times late on friday night, to go and take some pics of a lady for one of their news features. We needed to get her working in her garden, unfortunately a combination of it being winter and the wet weather made this a tricky prospect. It won't go down as one of my great shots, however I think we did a decent job given the circumstances. I decided to shoot a bit off brief with the plant filing the left third of the frame to make it look a little less like a winter garden, as the original plan left the garden looking very barren as garden's tend to look in winter.
I had to keep cleaning my lens as it was raining so much, the subject Carol deserves credit for doing everything asked over her, despite being cold and getting wet, luckily her husband was on hand with a brolly which made it feel like a celeb photo-shoot, shame my feet got soaked after sinking in the waterlogged grass!
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Good to see some more of my work in the local business news. My client Story Comms organised the PR for Finance Birmingham, who have provided funding for another successful Midlands based company BWB. The shoot was a quick one, as everyone was in a hurry, so I had to dispense with the fancy lighting and get back to basics (which isn't always a bad thing). Luckily everyone was nice and relaxed (and easy to work with), which shows in the image.
At a glance you would not believe that we were on a narrow floating pathway in the middle of a lake outside the new Resorts World development at the NEC, with people walking through the shoot. As usual on photo-shoots you have to make the best of what you have, and I think we managed that here. I've been waiting for this article for a while, in the knowledge that it was being held back for the summer. I spent a day with Fourfourtwo Magazine at St George's Park covering a story that football fans rarely see, the long road to recovery for an injured lower league player. The above cutting is only a small piece of the article, for the article in full visit: http://www.fourfourtwo.com/features/how-rehab-rebuilds-players-shattered-bodies-and-minds#comment_anchor
The story was fascinating, it's hard not to have a lot of sympathy for the guys who were working hard to get back to full fitness to try and earn a new contract. You tend to forget that for every £100k a week footballer you hear about, there are many more players in the lower leagues, they have the same bills that you and I have to pay and the same financial concerns, all mixed into a very short career. The players we met were all coming into the final months of their club contracts or already released, and were struggling to plan for their next contract as they were out of action. The PFA help them out with this short rehab course, and despite their worries the guy's were really giving it their all, and surprisingly upbeat and easy to work with. Good luck to them. I'll certainly be keeping an eye out for their names in the hope that they have got a contract over the next month or two. I meant to post this last week but lack of time got the better of me. Another good show in the Birmingham Post with Handmade Burger Company, who are receiving investment from Finance Birmingham for their new store at Grand Central. A behind the scenes photo from the shoot made it out onto Twitter as well, so now the back of my head is famous. Happy days.
Working with FourFourTwo magazine I get to see and take pictures of some interesting football related things. The most "different" so far, is the feature we did on former Stoke City striker Mamady Sidibe, who has opened a patisserie in Stoke with his wife. Firstly I have to say well done to Mamady, he was a great sport, often footballers are very image conscious and it can be awkward to work with them on something quirky like this. However Mamady did everything asked, with a good sense of humour, and didn't complain once.
I also like FourFourTwo's editorial style for this type of story. They make it humorous and lighthearted without making the subject look silly. Stoke isn't the first place you would think of for a patisserie, but Mamady has a nice shop and the pastries look great, and believe me the coffee is good. So if your in Stoke drop by. I've been waiting to see the results of a photoshoot I did for FourFourTwo magazine back at the beginning of March. We spent a day going through the steps a pro footballer would take when recovering from a serious injury. The shoot was at St Georges Park near Burton, which is a fantastic facility and we were working alongside pro's who were coming back from real injuries, which created the right atmosphere. There were plenty of photo opportunities that made it a good shoot, and I like how it looks on the page. It's been a long wait, but finally it's out in the shops. This is often how editorial work pans out. Although four months is one of the longer timeframes I have had to wait for publication.
Magazine's often plan a good section of their content months in advance and leave some space for things that happen around publication dates, which makes sense. However this leaves us impatient photographers chomping at the bit, eager to see our work on the page. I have another shoot in the same edition, so I will be posting about that soon. I was recently commissioned to do a shoot with some new staff at Midlands Truck and Van for their magazine. I enjoyed the shoot and as a bonus, I got to rearrange the whole garage for the pics. The guys there were really helpful, which makes things a lot easier. Being a Mercedes dealer it's quite a good commission to get. The shoot went well, although it was a bit of a tough one to light. I very rarely come away with flat batteries, but the combination of large room high ceiling and low ambient light meant this shoot really did drain them.
I was recently commissioned to take some pictures at a farm in Herefordshire, which had had a bumper crop of asparagus due to the good weather this spring.
I had never really thought how asparagus was grown and harvested, so it was really interesting to see the process in action. In the days of mechanisation, I would never have thought asparagus was picked by hand, but they have teams of workers following a tractor with a long bench across the back (I don't remember the technical term), the workers then cut the asparagus near the base with a sharp knife place it on the bench and then repeat. The shoot was really good and many thanks to Catherine for all the modelling and making sure we had more asparagus than we knew what to do with. It's always good to take pictures in the countryside on a sunny day, and the bonus is that it made The Times. During the gales at the beginning of April, I heard a story of a tree that had fallen on a car round the corner from my house. So I grabbed my camera and headed out to investigate. Usually when you here about these things they are often never as serious as initially reported. However when I arrived at the scene of this incident I was surprised by how serious it was. A tree had fallen onto a small car and completely crushed the front half. Onlookers at the scene said the driver had been pulled out and was on his way to hospital. There have been no further reports in the local press on his condition, so hopefully he's o.k.
I sent the shots out to the national press and it was picked up by the MailOnline, Daily Express and Daily Star. It's not often that stories like this happen on your doorstep. I went to the reinterment of Richard III for the Red Cross last week in Leicester. Red Cross were providing first aid assistance for the event, luckily there were very few injuries to report on, but the Red Cross had an impressive presence. It was a fascinating story to be involved with, I was surprised by the global reach the story had. We came across many different people who had come from a variety of places across Europe and North America, as well as visitors from around the U.K. It's amazing the numbers of people turning up to witness the reburial of a historic King who was found in a car park, Leicester City Council put the figure at 35,000! With so many people it was tough to find a good vantage point, however we managed to get an ariel view of the coffin from a roof top bar as it approached the Cathedral. The light was beautiful for the crowds, but a bit awkward for photographers with the low sunlight coming from behind the cortege creating a lot of shadows. At least there was a fantastic sunset.
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Matt Stewart PhotosI've been a photographer for quite a long time now. So hopefully I have something to say about it. Archives
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